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Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Disclosure Alert: Alpha Protocol: Episode 10: One Heck of a Guy

I've been receiving a lot of feedback telling me to let up on Aldowyn. Fortunately, you guys have been heard and I will do my best to correct this in the future. Unfortunately, I was only made aware of this AFTER recording this week's chunk, so you'll have to suck it up for just a little bit longer. Sorry about that!

In much cheerier news, those of you who are fans of Spoiler Warning (as in, almost all of you) will be pleased to see Mumbles make her triumphant return to LPs with week as our special guest. (Such a shame the Thorton can't eat people.)

I really enjoy Steven Heck's character. This is Nolan North as his very best. A lot of people give Nolan North flak for all of the many video games where he stars as an "everyman character" like Nathan Drake. While that is deserved to some degree, the guy is actually a very good voice actor, which is why he gets so many roles in the gaming space. As for the character Heck himself, he's about as lovable and heroic of a psychopath as you could possible find. If he likes you, he'll kill anyone who's out to get you. If he hates you (or if you call him "Steve") watch out. Considering Alpha Protocol is going for the feel of a spy thriller like James Bond or 24, Heck fits in well, even if I disagree with anaphysik that I could plausibly believe that a criminally insane man would be capable of doing what Steven Heck can do, if only for the logistics of it.

The rest of the guys are right when they point out the biggest problem with Scarlet Lake. She is perhaps one of the most cliche characters Obsidian could have included in a Modern-Day Spy RPG. The plucky, red-headed reporter who has a nose for a scoop and is willing to do anything to get it has been played so many times before that most a lot of people just look at it and groan. Mumbles hit the nail on the head when she said that naming a red-headed chick Scarlet is very lazy. It's not particularly game breaking or anything, but compared to other characters, there really isn't a lot of depth to Scarlet, at least not until you get to the end of the game.

To close this comment, I need you guys to help me out with something. I want the Lumberjack beard and I know you guys want it too. If we're going to get that to happen, then I need your help convincing them to give us more beard time. Leave a comment either here or on the official Disclosure Alert twitter profile to let those two know about the awesomeness of the Lumberjack beard. They promised that if enough people comment with their approval, then we'll have at least one episode each week with the Lumberjack beard.*

*This statement may or may not be my attempt to troll those two. Promises might not have actually been made and those two may actually hate the Lumberjack beard.

Moscow should be a decent starting point. Most people end up starting there. The only real problem is (like all 3 hubs) the boss fight there sucks. (Although the Moscow boss sucks particularly hard.) You meet a couple of key characters and offers a few choices.

Despite that, I would EASILY recommend Taipei as a starting point. Steven Heck is one of the game's best characters and meeting him unlocks a useful intel that I will mention once we get to the end of Moscow.

I love Taipei's safehouse, and Moscow is the least interesting safehouse imo, but to me the Rome safehouse is the best. We'll talk more about it later.

Mumbles's audio was something we tried to fix, but couldn't. Because we record in Skype, It's all one audio file. :/

Maybe it was because of the game overall, but Scarlet never became stale or felt too cliche to me. I always assumed that the people I was talking to could be untrustworthy people who were plotting to betray me (which gave me some guilt in Rome) and they particularly foreshadow it with her, so I kept umming and ahhing between trying to piss her off in the hope she'd be unable to find reasons to stay close to me and trying to gain her trust so that I could trap her/because I thought she was a nice person.

I think Moscow's the most boring. Albatros, Sis and SIE are cool, but the mission is the least clear cut of them all, the setting is drab grey and it's got two of the worst points of the game combat wise, particularly low level. It's better when you come to it later after a bit of visual spice and when you've got a fuller picture of Halbech's actions (and preferably have been introduced to G22).

Rome has got a lot of mission variety (although to be fair, so has Moscow), is colourful and has a nice obvious climax +Marburg and Taipei is colourful with an obvious climax and the most obvious objective running through all the missions

He does not sell you out if you kill or alienate Sie or Albatross first, Im not sure if he does when doing Taipei first.

Ive played this game some many times and in trying to find new stuff to do i tried to have no options at the end for a handler but it can't be done. I had max hate with Heck and did not meet Sie and killed off Albatross yet he still sold out Wen.

@Jokerman: Interesting. We do know that Heck is always available as handler for the final mission (as, say, the Yes Man route is always available in New Vegas and the independent route is always available in Bloodlines), but that him not selling you out depends on more than just him liking you is interesting and kind of weird.